IvyMike

Average beauty

A lunchtime discussion on average faces and the perception of beauty led me to "Beautycheck", a website which thoroughly examines the psychology of what makes a face beautiful.

Several things surprised me: contrary to what I had heard, "average" faces aren't more beautiful--if you average unbeautiful faces together, the resulting face still isn't perceived as beautiful. Also, symmetry isn't all that important to the perception of beauty, either.

However, the skin-smoothing effects of averaging DO increase the perception of beauty. For a moment, I thought I had a brilliant idea for a new product--until I realized that I had just re-invented "makeup".

Tags: beauty, attractiveness, psychology, beautycheck

posted by IvyMike @ 12/15/2005 01:06:00 AM